Technical Blog – Page 41

Abandon Cart All Ye Who Enter Here

” Anyone can write a book. Anyone can publish a book. It takes a genius to sell a book “
-Alfred Knopf

Today I read an email from my dad about a discussion I opened on how happy he was with his site. I was never 100% satisfied with it.
My dad is a print man. He didn’t like the font I picked or the punctuation mistakes.I just knew it was still slightly confused and had too much repeat content. I also knew that as an online shopping experience it didn’t cut it. But I didn’t feel I had the right to change the content of the site.Sure, I took new photos and connected a lot of them to LightBox. I made the site look more up to date. I changed it from static HTML pages to PHP…but lack of bells and whistles weren’t the problem. The site’s goal is to sell books. We don’t make it easy to sell books from the Web site. Game Over.

This is entirely due to the fact that on his host it wasn’t possible to have a mySQL database connection until a few weeks ago. This cut us out from using ZenCart or PHPShop or Cubecart. So we made due with the host’s store building program (Shopsite Starter) that only allows you to have 15 products for sale in the store at any time. Talk about limiting!
My dad has more than 50 titles for sale. I tried to convince him to upgrade to the second level of Shopsite which cost the same as what one month of hosting costs-doubling his costs. He balked. I don’t blame him. For what he pays he could have (mt) Media Temple’s awesome service. But switching an entire site is a big job as everyone knows. I am seriously going to suggest it, however.
Hosting has advanced and the days of hosts being able to charge business prices while providing totally crap service are pretty much gone.
Until we can sell every single title from the same shopping cart service, the site will remain confusing and confused. I mean, it is hard enough these days to sell books. Harder even still to sell obscure niche literature. Which is why we have to provide the clearest, easiest shopping experience to my dad’s customers.

Have any advice? Is it better to offer only 15 books for sale (but then what to do with the 40 other books on the site, just not even show them at all?). Should I chuck Shopsite and Mercantec and only use Paypal? I’d love to steer clear of Paypal for the time being.

Should I make the jump to (mt)?

Watch Movies,TV Online Free

I’m subscribed to the makeuseof.com newsletter which keeps me up to date on the most useful and free web applications,tools,and tricks you can find online. I subscribed for the free web applications but of course what’s really got me excited(I’m greedy and cheap) were the links makeuseof.com gave me to watch movies and tv shows.

I realize that it isn’t exactly legal…And that some folks would consider this stealing. But the truth is that out of the 7 links provided to view TV and movies off of some Web sites, only one had actual watchable-quality content.

Case in point Gray’s Anatomy on TV Links. See the impressive amount of shows? All 3 seasons(seemingly). Well, 99% of the shows I tried to watch either didn’t load at all or were way too pixelated to watch or just stopped playing after 10 minutes or so.Free sure doesn’t mean quality. I get it. But one site delivered. Videohybrid has TV shows but not that many episodes to watch.In fact only had 1 episode of GA. But the one they had was excellent quality.

I started to watch the film Captivity but found it dull and then saw 28 Weeks Later available on the list! watch it here.It gets a bit fuzzy during some parts but it is still highly watchable.

But be warned: the films they have listed that are still in theaters are the kind that have been camcorded inside the theater. Those may suck. But at least you won’t buy the bootleg DVD for 5 dollars,take it home all jazzed to watch this great new movie only to find that you can’t see the screen because it’s all black or the recorder has gotten a side seat so you see the movie at a skewed angle. And then to make it even better someone gets up right in front of the camera and blocks the screen! Save your 5 bucks.

To see the original post from makeuseof.com go here

Don’t be like me.

If you’re like me you get distracted during your project and waste time when, if you could just finish those last few tasks,the job would be done. This doesn’t happen for my paid jobs-I guess getting paid is impetus enough for finishing on schedule. This happens during my “pet” projects and I have 4 going on simultaneously.

One is switching a beast of a site I made for a friend into a WordPress powered site. Ahhh, the loveliness of it all. But the beast is large and involves not only the transference of much content but also designing the theme. I am designing as I go. I am even bravely considering releasing it to the general public. Gasp. But that is pet project number 4.
Number 2 is my other friend’s art site and without project number 1, project number 2 would be even slower getting done (because they are both sites for displaying artwork, the theme works for both).

Number 3 is figuring out all the mistakes I made when I switched my old site and blog to WP.They are numerous. Number 3 scares me.
So now I have to go over each project and tell my self that if I did A, B and C, it would be done.
If you are your own boss you have to actually be the boss of yourself. And you must learn how manage your own time productively. No one is going to tell you that perhaps you might want to finish editing the painting pictures and load them to the server before you spend a half hour looking for a bigger TV on Craigslist. Or looking at clothes, perfume and or shoes Web sites…a big waste of time for me, I’m afraid.

The thing you must also remember is that too much time on the computer isn’t so good. You tell yourself that you are working like a dog and should get some pats on the head for your diligence. Well,you should. But you also need to take care of yourself. You need to go outside. Run errands. Be with people. Do something fun.

You are your own boss and no one can work you to the bone like you can. But you can give yourself some free time. And after 8 hours straight working on 4 projects you won’t be all that productive,anyway. This doesn’t mean you can now go look for shoes online. This means step away from the computer and be a human being for a few hours!

Using Paypal as an alternative to writing checks.

I have an employer who suffers from Mailitis. I am a fellow sufferer so we came up with a way for him to pay me using Paypal which does away with the whole mailing a letter thing. Only trouble is Paypal is going to get 12 dollars each time I get paid. 12 dollars? There has to be another way. And get this: Paypal took one dollar out of my account. For what reason? I don’t know. This worries me. This account-tweasing was done before I performed the Request Money request of my boss. The not funny thing is I think it was some sort of charge because I called customer service. Uncool.

I don’t think using Paypal as a means to get paid is good for anyone other than Paypal.